Knowledge Engine for Emergency Response Services -Dr. E. Douglas Harris, Associate Dean and Executive Director, Cyber Security & Emergency Preparedness Institute. -Dr. Bhavani Thuraisingham, Professor and Director, Cyber Security Research Center. -Dr. Ovidiu Daescu, Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science University of Texas at Dallas.

Motivation. Challenges Involved. How the Knowledge Engine meets these challenges. Architecture. Automation / Flowchart. An application – ArcGIS based Routing. Organization of this Presentation

Motivating Scenario: Due to an accident in a chemical processing plant or collision of a chemical carrying truck, a hazardous airborne chemical is released into an inhabited area. Only few members of the team know the area. Multiple departments and agencies from different counties must cooperate to evacuate the population and contain the leak as quickly as possible. Internet access is intermittent, cell phone towers are overloaded and information is pouring from different sources.

Challenges Involved: Action must be taken within hours to avoid further casualties. Efficiency of the response team depends on how timely and well-informed they are. A great deal of collaboration and coordination is required as large quantities of data comes from different sources and multiple response teams from various departments are involved.

The Solution: Knowledge Engine (KE) Automates the decision making process as much as possible. Aggregates the data from all sources into a single, coherent source of reference. Exposes only the necessary information. Encapsulates detailed data for further reference. Ensures that the existing security and integrity of data is maintained. Provides necessary information as quickly as possible

KE and iCIT TM together, they can provide : - iCIT is an incident management tool developed by CH2M Hill, based on Groove Virtual Office. Incident Response and Consequence Management With a single, shared, real-time map Dynamically update the data in the workspace. Integrates ArcGIS’s Network Analyst. Scalable as the incident grows Local, regional, national (roll-up with the same application)

Architecture: EOC users Field users Knowledge Engine Local Database E-Plan Web server NDFD Weather Web Service Intermittent connections Persistent connections iCIT Groove

Knowledge Engine Integrates and Automates… The process of retrieving the weather information at the accident location for the ALOHA based plume modeling. Retrieving chemical inventory from E-plan server. Assumes worst case scenario if sufficient data is not available and continues with the plume modeling. Integrates the ArcGIS “Network Analyst” for finding safe and shortest paths in presence of chemical dispersions. (currently working)

ArcGIS Network Analyst. Source Destination Shortest path

Source Destination Barrier Rerouting in the Presence of Barriers on the Shortest Path New shortest path

Link Solver Algorithm by Dr. Ovidiu Daescu and James Palmer